09-13-2026, 02:09 PM
Right direction IMO for sure. Overwhelmingly, to be candid, my impression is that the effort to rhyme is massively holding this poem back:
We blinked like sleep could be denied,
while bedtime surfaced from the ocean floor
and lavendered with dreams the sky we wore.
The traces of our castles could not hide already the syntax is clearly beholden to form
forever in swimsuits she called inside: and it gets worse with this line. this is classic "trying to rhyme" sentence building: The ___ of our ____ could not ___ in ___ she ___. Not a natural sentence structure...
Sophia watched us with each passing chore.
Cold water pulsed in darkness, to restore more poemy syntax
our saltsteeped hues that teased a rising tide. ...and the syntax makes parsing effortful, so that I lose the impact of these lines
By morning we were gone. The drying air lovely. here the language is fully in control of itself.
stirred wind chimes, and the redolent clouds thinned. better without "and"
The moon dissolved into a backseat daze. very nice
Though lost or passed down colors turn threadbare booooo @ this syntax
as castles are reshaped, this breath of wind
recalled us: an unburdened clothesline sways. ostentatiously poemy :/
--
Still just can't read the poem without being consciously aware of its trying to be a poem. Individual gestures and images have a lot to offer. Whole is not cohering to more than sum of parts. Craft is noticeably still developing in many places.
Feels more or less like "poet has some admirable skill but should not be trying to do rhymed metered verse"
We blinked like sleep could be denied,
while bedtime surfaced from the ocean floor
and lavendered with dreams the sky we wore.
The traces of our castles could not hide already the syntax is clearly beholden to form
forever in swimsuits she called inside: and it gets worse with this line. this is classic "trying to rhyme" sentence building: The ___ of our ____ could not ___ in ___ she ___. Not a natural sentence structure...
Sophia watched us with each passing chore.
Cold water pulsed in darkness, to restore more poemy syntax
our saltsteeped hues that teased a rising tide. ...and the syntax makes parsing effortful, so that I lose the impact of these lines
By morning we were gone. The drying air lovely. here the language is fully in control of itself.
stirred wind chimes, and the redolent clouds thinned. better without "and"
The moon dissolved into a backseat daze. very nice
Though lost or passed down colors turn threadbare booooo @ this syntax
as castles are reshaped, this breath of wind
recalled us: an unburdened clothesline sways. ostentatiously poemy :/
--
Still just can't read the poem without being consciously aware of its trying to be a poem. Individual gestures and images have a lot to offer. Whole is not cohering to more than sum of parts. Craft is noticeably still developing in many places.
Feels more or less like "poet has some admirable skill but should not be trying to do rhymed metered verse"